Roachkiller and Other Stories (11 page)

“Like the leather jacket you wore to the funeral? That looked new.”

“Like I said, so what?”

“Danny came here all the time, didn’t he? He stayed at Orange’s but he came here, too, using his Magic Markers to practice his tags. And when he got kicked out of Orange’s place, he came running here, with all the money. And you wanted that money.”

She stood across from him and laughed softly to herself. “Huh,” she said, then she sat down, making crumpling and whooshing sounds on the plastic couch.

“I was pissed that he gave some of his money to that hipster. How could he be so stupid!”

“Where did you get the gun?”

“My stepfather works security. He leaves it around all the time. He’s got it now, so you don’t have to worry about me shooting you.”

“That’s good news,” Vega said, sitting down. They sat in silence for a while.

“I ran out of things to say,” Lissette said.

“That’s okay. Tell me, was Danny really your boyfriend?”

“Hah! He went around telling everyone that. And then—then he fell in love with that white girl.” She curled into a ball on the couch, weeping into a gold-colored, tasseled pillow.

“And the baby?”

She spoke into the pillow. “Remember how I said I still had Danny’s spirit with me?”

“Yeah,” Vega said.

“I don’t anymore.”

“Oh.”

“Are you gonna arrest me? You can’t because you’re not a cop.”

“True. But the cops I called on my way here can.”

“Well. That sucks.”

A few minutes later there was a beefy knock on the door.

“That’s them,” Vega said, getting up to open the door.

“Hey,” Lissette said. “If I don’t see you, take care, Mr. Detective.”

“You too, Lissette.”

After the cops left, Vega took the stinky elevator back down and started limping back home. He thought maybe he would work out a little, lift some weights. He thought about maybe he would play video games for a few hours. He thought about donuts. He came to his block then walked past his house and kept on walking and walking until he got to his favorite
cuchifrito
place.

Santa’s Little Helper

Today was the day. Bianco passed his hands over the packages that filled the truck, checking they were secure, testing the weight of some, noting addresses. He found three going to 175 North 5th Street, one of them from a fancy computer company.
Merry Christmas,
Bianco thought.
This one. This one is mine.

“You ready to roll?” Bianco said.

“Yeah.” James sat on the concrete floor of the truck bay. He got up slowly, struggling not to spill his large coffee. Didn’t work. He spilled half the coffee on his pants. “Damn!”

“That’s terrific,” said Bianco.

James was Bianco’s helper in the truck for the holiday season. The kid was a stand-up guy, as far as Bianco was concerned. And Bianco had had some winners in his twelve years at United Parcel. Old men who couldn’t lift themselves, let alone a box. College boys who smelled like pot and gave you tips on how to do your job better. Even women, some who could haul boxes out of the truck like halfbacks. This guy James, he could lift, followed directions, and didn’t smell. So he was no ballerina. Fine. And he didn’t like to be called Jimmy. He once took a whole lunch break to make that clear. Whatever.

The kid seemed a little nervous today. Funny. Not like he drank all his coffee. Well, as long as he didn’t get in the way today, that was all right.

Bianco delivered in his old neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Getting there through traffic was a toothache on top of a hangover on top of a kick in the balls. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway was a string of red lights; Metropolitan Avenue, no better. The holiday season made everything worse.

“I just think it’s stupid,” James said. He stood in the narrow doorway leading to the back of the truck and tapped his fingers on the wall. His left knee bopped like he had the palsy. “How come you can’t just pick me up at my house?”

“Rules is rules,” Bianco said.

“Like, do I have to go through their Homeland Security shit at the garage every day? They should know by now I’m not coming in with a bomb.”

Bianco laughed. “Homeland Security. Jeez.”

“I have to go all the way to Queens, which takes forever, and then they pass the wand over me, and then you drive me all the way back to Brooklyn, right near where I live. It’s just stupid.”

Bianco pointed out a Toyota in front of them. “This asswipe doesn’t know how to drive,” he said. “Use your signals!”

“I live, literally, like two blocks from here,” James went on, still tapping, still bopping.

Steel-gray clouds hung low in the sky. The weatherman called for icy rain later, and Bianco hated the idea of running back and forth under it, making this long day even longer.

“Right here,” James said. “I live on Lorimer Street, right there.”

“On Lorimer?”

“Yeah, two blocks in.”

“That’s funny. What number?” Bianco said.

“252. Why is that funny?”

“I grew up on Lorimer, right across from 252. Small frikkin’ world.”

“Wow, yeah,” James said.

“Well, it’s funny,” Bianco said. “As a matter of fact, I knew the family that lived at 252. Mr. Pannunzio, God rest his soul, he used to go crazy for Christmas. He would string lights from the two sides to his roof—you’d see him every year, hanging off his roof, I swear, it’s a wonder he never fell off and broke his ass—and it’d come out to this huge Christmas tree, you know. Beautiful thing. He’d have the Christmas music playing, wreaths, frikking dancing Santa, the whole nine.”

“Wow.”

“I wonder who lives there now? His daughter probably. She was gorgeous. She still do the lights?”

“I haven’t seen any Christmas lights over there.”

“No?”

“Yeah, I know people who live there. But not the owners.”

“That’s a shame.”

*  *  *

The Toyota finally turned on Union Avenue. Bianco continued on Metropolitan, under the overpass of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, where James could see homeless people camping out, and moved toward the river.

James  kept drumming the doorway, bopping his knee.  “We’re going to see the Hasidim?” James said. “Or what I like to call ‘the Amish of Brooklyn.’”

“‘Amish.’ That’s funny. Yeah,” Bianco said.

They got to Berry Street then turned onto Division Avenue. They would deliver around the old Navy Yard first, where the Hasidim, in their long beards and dark clothes, lived.

James had come to Brooklyn from Seattle for a girl he’d met at a friend’s wedding. Open bar, slow dance, coatcheck room. He followed her to New York then lived with her. Things were good for a while, but she was always on his back to get a job. Lucky, he had a couple of buddies in town, so he moved in with them. Now they lived in a tiny apartment. No heat, no bathroom sink, five million roaches. But he’d gotten a job.

He liked the work. It felt good, physical. Much better than his job at the used record store. More than anything, James was happy that the driver was so easygoing, and that the two of them could talk like real people. They’d been working together two weeks already, and James was fascinated to know somebody who was actually from Brooklyn. He loved the way the driver spoke and looked and gestured. To James, it was like watching a movie from the ’70s.

“After this, we’re doing the regular route down Bedford?” James said.

“Yeah. The Asscrack of Williamsburg.”

“Asssscrack!” James laughed. Then he pulled out his smartphone to check the time.

“You know when I was growing up,” Bianco said, “four guys could get high on a quart of beer and that was enough, you know. We mostly got along with the Germans and Irish guys from around McCarren Park, as long as they stayed away from our girls.”

James guffawed.

“We had self-respect, you know. We took care of our own. Back then, a woman could walk the streets any hour of the day.”

“Wow,” James said.

“Then came the wets and the eggplants, you know, with their guns and their knives and their drugs. Then the whole neighborhood went to shit. One time we caught a Spanish guy holding hands with my sister Theresa. We followed him for a while, then we took care of him.”

“You beat him up?” James said.

“We beat him so bad he couldn’t take a regular piss for the rest of his life,” Bianco said. He parked in front of a clothing store. “These two,” he said, signaling two packages.

James took the larger one, scraping his hands under it. “Fuck!”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

Walking to the store, Bianco said, “Like I was saying, now the neighborhood has changed, you know. You have what you call your hipsters and your yuppies moving in. Nice people. Good, clean people. Like you, James, you know.”

James laughed. He didn’t like to be called a hipster. But he didn’t want to get into it. Not today.

*  *  *

Bedford Avenue was a narrow crevasse of sushi restaurants, computer stores, record shops, art galleries, and clothing stores with Soho prices. During Christmas season, delivering along Bedford’s busiest strip—about five blocks—could take six hours.

James picked on a tiny piece of skin on his right pinky. After some time they stopped in front of 175 North 5th Street.

“Stay here,” said Bianco, picking up two packages. “This’ll be quick.”

Just as Bianco jumped off the truck, James said, “Hey, isn’t this for the same address?” He was holding up the package Bianco had picked.

“Nah, I think they marked it wrong.”

“Are you sure? It’s the same address.”

“I’m sure, kid. Leave that there.”

James stood there, holding the package.

“Leave it there,” Bianco said again.

At that moment, the woman who lived at 175 North 5th Street came down the street. She smiled at Bianco. “Frank! I’ve been waiting for you. You should have the last of my Christmas shopping.”

“I got these,” he said, moving closer to the building.

She looked at the packages. “Yes and yes. But I was supposed to get something from Apple.”

Bianco felt it before it happened.

“Hey! Is this it?” James jumped from the truck with the package.

“Ooh, yes! That’s it! Perfect.”

Bianco’s face went poker blank as she signed for the packages.

“You missed that one, boss,” James said. “See, I told you.”

“Good looking out,” Bianco said. “Good looking out.”

Back in the truck, James began to chew his hand again. Bianco gave him a dead-eyed look. “Maybe you should get some gum,” he said.

“Whaddya mean?”

“You chew your finger like a dog with a bone. Jeez.”

James said nothing. They turned onto Kent Avenue. Bianco was looking up at the next turn, when two black SUVs coming toward them turned and screeched to a stop right in front of the truck.

Bianco heard packages in the back tumbling to the floor. “Asshole!”

A man with a black wool mask covering his face, and dark shades wrapped around his head on top of the mask, came out of the passenger side of the smaller SUV with a gun. He pointed it right at Bianco. Another man in a wool mask came out of the same SUV and ran around to Bianco’s side.

“Get out of the truck,” he said.

“What the fucking fuck is this?” said Bianco.

  “Just follow along and you’ll live,” said one of the men. He had a thick beard. “Just chillax.”

“Chillax?”

They took him out of the truck and prodded him into one of the SUVs. They duct-taped his hands behind him and duct-taped his mouth.

*  *  *

They had been planning since the night James got back from his first day of work. They were sitting around, drinking beers and watching porn.

“You should’ve seen all that stuff we delivered today. Like half a million worth,” James said. “All the money people spend on Christmas. It’s sick.”

“I hate Christmas,” Aaron said. He was a big man, with a thick beard and a skunk streak of white through his brown greasy hair.

“Me, too,” Ryan said. Ryan was Aaron’s brother who, for some reason, couldn’t grow a beard. “Imagine if we, like, hijacked the truck and took all the stuff.”

“Yeah, but what would we do with it?” James said.

“Keep it. Or sell it on eBay.”

“There’s even porn in there,” James said. “Frank, the driver, told me some guy gets all this porn stuff delivered to his house from Chatsworth, California.”

“Porn Valley, USA,” said Aaron.

“What’s this driver like?”

“Old Italian guy.”

“Mafia, you think?”

James laughed, but he had wondered.

“Do you think you could take him?” said Ryan.

“Who needs to take him if we had a gun?” said Aaron.

“Like we have a gun.”

Their friend Hamilton, who never took off his wraparound shades, came out of the bathroom then. “Gun? Who needs a gun?”

They kidded about it for a few days. Then James told them that the driver had said big shipments for all the stores on Bedford would be coming in the following week.

“It’d be the sweetest Christmas shopping ever,” said Ryan.

“I love Christmas,” said Aaron.

When Hamilton showed up with a gun the next day, they all wanted one.

*  *  *

Bianco’s wife had told him to retire. Judy had gotten tired of his working late every night during the holiday season, even on Christmas Eve sometimes. “You’re not frigging Santa Claus,” she said. But he could make several grand in year-end tips. And then there were the fringe benefits.

He had been reprimanded several times for undelivered packages. “Packages go missing all the time,” he would say. And then people on the Internet would throw money at you for an ebook reader, fancy boots, a flat-screen TV once. 

Judy saw the stuff piling up in the garage. “What are you, frigging Santa Claus?”

There’s a lot of bills to take care of and a lot of your relatives to take care of, he thought to say. But he just said, “Leave it alone. Go back to your flat-screen TV.”

In the SUV, Bianco heard the door on the other side open, to his right, felt the cold outside air come in. The seat shifted weight. The door slammed. He figured it was James, trussed up like he was. Two turkeys.